Scientific Advisors

Psychiatry
Center for Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Inc.
Las Vegas, Nevada

Dr. Childress is in private practice in Las Vegas, Nevada and specializes in the treatment of ADHD. About 80% of her practice is research based. She also has adjunct faculty appointments at the University of Nevada Las Vegas School of Medicine, and Touro University Nevada College of Osteopathic Medicine. Dr. Childress is board certified in psychiatry, with a subspecialty in child and adolescent psychiatry.

Before earning her medical degree at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, Dr. Childress studied at St. Louis University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri. She completed a psychiatry internship and residency and a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina.

Dr. Childress has authored numerous publications on the topic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). As Co-Principal Investigator, she has participated in more than 175 clinical trials.

Dr. Childress is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She is President-elect of The American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders and is also Education Director for the Nevada Psychiatric Association.

Brian D. Barash, M.D. is a Founder and Partner of Comprehensive Psychiatric Associates, a Psychiatric practice serving patients of all ages in the metropolitan Kansas City area. He also serves as a founding partner of CPA Clinical Research and has been involved in various clinical behavioral health trials. Dr. Barash graduated with Honors from the University of Kansas with his undergraduate degree in Human Biology. He completed medical school in 1995, also at the University of Kansas Medical School where he was honored with the Cogwell award for his performance in coursework in Anatomy and Cell Biology. Dr. Barash completed his Adult Psychiatry training in 1998 and after serving as Chief Resident at the Kansas City VA Medical Center, he then went on to finish a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Dr. Barash is a Board Certified Diplomate both in General Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Dr. Barash is Medical Director of Signature Behavioral Health Systems and supervises inpatient and outpatient services including Partial Hospital, Intensive Outpatient, and TMS therapy. He is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Kansas Medical Center and also an Associate Professor at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences where he frequently lectures and serves as a regular Preceptor of tomorrow’s leaders.

Andrew J. Cutler is the Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Meridien Research, where he conducts clinical trials for Phase I-IV studies. In addition, Dr. Cutler serves on the Board of the Neuroscience Education Institute. Dr. Cutler also speaks to professional and community audiences about the evaluation and treatment of mental illnesses such as ADHD, Bipolar Disorder (Manic-Depression), Major Depression, Anxiety Disorders and Schizophrenia and frequently consults with pharmaceutical companies on research & development and commercialization & marketing of medications. He has been Board Certified in both Psychiatry and Internal Medicine and has been conducting clinical research since 1993 at the University of Virginia, the University of Chicago, and since 1996, in Central Florida. Dr. Cutler received the “Distinguished Clinical Professional Award” by the Central Florida chapter of the National Mental Health Association in 1999. He was also selected as a Top Doctor by Orlando magazine in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. Dr. Cutler graduated from Haverford College in Pennsylvania and received his MD degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1989. He completed Internship and Residencies in both Psychiatry and Internal Medicine at the University of Virginia Medical Center and served as Chief Resident in the Department of Psychiatric Medicine.

Laurence L. Greenhill, MD, is the Ruane Professor of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, at the Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Greenhill’s clinical expertise is in the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD, depression, and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Greenhill is co-chair of the New York State Psychiatric Institutional Review Board (IRB). Before the IRB work, he engaged in research on the safety and efficacy of medications to ameliorate psychiatric symptoms in youth, with specific projects in determining the long-term benefits and safety of medication treatments on preschool children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and conducted research trials on the efficacy of different types of treatment to reduce suicidal behaviors in depressed adolescents. He is also past president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Dr. Greenhill graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in 1967. Dr. Greenhill is board certified in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychiatry. He has been in private practice for 39 years.

Dr. John Markowitz is a Professor of Pharmacotherapy and Translational Research at the University of Florida, where his research program has encompassed both in vitro and in vivo investigations including normal volunteer pharmacokinetic studies directed at the assessment of drug-drug interactions in psychopharmacology, botanical-drug interactions, as well as their associated clinical effects. More recently, the research program has focused on variability in drug metabolism, disposition, and therapeutic response as a consequence of genetic variability which influences both drug transporters and hepatic enzymes. Dr. Markowitz has been credentialed by the Board of Pharmaceutical Specialties in Psychiatric Pharmacy since 1997. Following his training, Dr. Markowitz served for a number of years as a hospital-based Clinical Specialist in Psychiatry within the Institute of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, South Carolina. He eventually entered into a primary faculty research position in the MUSC College of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences with a dual appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences where he had remained prior to joining UF in 2009. Dr. Markowitz has earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Memphis State University in Biology and a Pharm.D. from the University of Tennessee (UT) College of Pharmacy. Following graduation from UT, he completed a residency in Psychiatric Pharmacy, also at UT.

Dr. Dinohra Munoz-Silva is a practicing psychiatrist treating children and adolescents. Dr. Munoz-Silva has been in practice for more than 20 years. Her major research interests include pharmacologic treatment of aggression in adolescent inpatients; pharmacologic intervention of treatment refractory adolescent schizophrenics; and determinants of length of hospital stay in psychiatric inpatients. Dr. Munoz-Silva has held academic appointments at Bergen Pines County Hospital, St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital Center, Albert Einstein School of Medicine at Yeshiva University, and New York University School of Medicine. She is a member of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. She received her medical degree from Ross University School of Medicine.

Dr. Jeffrey Newcorn is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. Dr. Newcorn’s work spans both clinical and translational topics. He is a member of the steering committee of the NIMH-funded multicenter study “Multimodal Treatment of Children with ADHD (MTA).” He was a member of the DSM-IV advisory committees on child and adolescent disorders and disruptive behavior disorders. He is the primary investigator on a NIMH-funded ADHD Research Infrastructure Network devoted to understanding the neurobiology of ADHD, and is the principle investigator or co-investigator on several NIMH-funded grants that examine the clinical, genetic, neuroanatomic and neurophysiologic basis of ADHD its treatment. He is an editorial board member of several leading child psychiatry and psychology journals. Dr. Newcorn directs an active clinical trials program, and has studied many of the newer medication treatments for ADHD. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these and related subjects. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Rochester. He completed his general psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry training at Tufts-New England Medical Center.

Declan Quinn, MD is a Professor and Head of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry of the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. He was a founding member of CADDRA (Canadian ADHD Resource Alliance) in 2005 and currently President of CADDRA, which has developed the Canadian ADHD Practice Guidelines and currently in the 3rd edition. He has been involved in the development Canadian practice guidelines for ADHD. Dr. Quinn has also been involved in research in ADHD since the late 1980’s and has a particular focus on pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics. He has completed studies on the isomers of Methylphenidate that led to the introduction of d-Methylphenidate as a treatment for ADHD. He has been involved in key studies looking at the Pharmacokinetics including Bioavailability of different once a day preparations of d-Amphetamine and Methylphenidate in ADHD. Dr. Quinn holds degrees from Trinity College & University of Saskatchewan.

Sharon Wigal, PhD is President and Director of Clinical Services for AVIDA Inc. a private, multidisciplinary clinical research center in Newport Beach, CA. At Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa, CA, she worked with children with special needs. Dr. Wigel also worked at the University of California, Irvine for 26 years as a Clinical Professor in Pediatrics and Psychiatry and Human Behavior. Dr. Wigal won the David A. Zeaman Travel Award for research in mental retardation in 1989 and the New Investigator Award for the 1997 New Clinical Drug Evaluation Unit. She was a Principal Investigator for the long-term federally funded Preschool ADHD Treatment Study (PATS). In addition, she was the recipient of a K-23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. Three years ago, Dr. Wigal founded AVIDA Inc. to serve community needs related to ADHD, Autism Spectrum and other disorders of childhood in education, training and consulting. She has published extensively on ADHD and has authored and co-authored numerous scientific articles that have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Wigal received her doctorate in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Ignacio Herman Valdes is a board-certified Psychiatrist who has been practicing since 2002. Dr. Valdes worked for such companies as IBM both as a NASA contractor and private commercial contracting, Compaq, and other startup Health IT companies. He is an accomplished Bachelor of science computer science from Texas A&M, Master of science computer science from the University of Houston. He programs in most popular computer languages. He has extensive scientific training and practice as a Brain Imaging Fellow and healthcare informatics. He feels privileged to have served Veterans at the Michael E Debakey Veterans Affairs hospital in Houston, Texas using the VistA EHR. He has had many notable software firsts such as the Astronaut VistA Installer Suite, VistA technical standards, the first VistA EHR deployment in the cloud, as well as numerous innovations to the software. He successfully headed 14 VA federal government software development projects achieving them all on time and on budget with 97 percent customer satisfaction. He remains committed to serving patients effectively, efficiently, and safely. He founded Astronaut, LLC in 2009. He is Attending Physician, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO) for multiple practice locations such as Blue Bonnet Clinic, Daystars Partial Hospitalization Program and more. He drives, refurbishes, maintains, and builds antique cars. He is an Assistant Scout Master at his local Scouts BSA troop.

Dr. Alice Mao is Professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of medicine. She is a national expert on treatment of children with autism and developmental disabilities and comorbid conditions including attention deficit / hyper activity disorder, anxiety and bipolar disorder. She has participated in clinical trials for novel medications for treatment of attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder and has treated children, adolescents and adults with ADHD for over 25 years in clinical practice. She was a senior board examiner for the American Board of psychiatry and neurology. She is also serving on the program committee for the American Academy of child and adolescent psychiatry.